CrossOver Alternatives for Mac
There are many alternatives to CrossOver for Mac if you are looking for a replacement. The best Mac alternative is Wine, which is both free and Open Source. If that doesn't suit you, our users have ranked more than 25 alternatives to CrossOver and 13 are available for Mac so hopefully you can find a suitable replacement. Other interesting Mac alternatives to CrossOver are PlayOnLinux - PlayOnMac, Pegasus, Parallels Desktop and WineBottler.
CrossOver alternatives are mainly Compatibility Layer Tools but may also be Game Library Managers or Virtualization Tools. Filter by these if you want a narrower list of alternatives or looking for a specific functionality of CrossOver.
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Linux
- Android
- Android Tablet
- BSD
Wine is a free, open source application for running Windows software on operating systems that are normally not supported. With Wine, you can install and run these applications just like you would in Windows.
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Linux
- BSD
- Wine
- FreeBSD
PlayOnLinux is a graphical frontend for the Wine software compatibility layer which allows Linux and Mac users to install Windows-based video games, Microsoft Office (2000 to 2010), Microsoft Internet Explorer, as well as many other applications.
- Free • Open Source
- Mac
- Windows
- Linux
- Android
- Raspberry Pi
Pegasus is a graphical frontend for browsing your game library (especially retro games) and launching them from one place. It's focusing on customizability, cross platform support (including embedded devices) and high performance.
Parallels Desktop gives Mac users the ability to run Windows, Linux or any other operating system and their critical applications at the same time as macOS. Parallels Desktop is optimized for Intel and Apple M1 chip.
Parallels Desktop vs CrossOver opinions
CrossOver emulates windows application layer. parallels creates a fully virtualised machine and requires Windows installation, like if it was a physical computer.
This is a virtualization tool, not a compatibility layer
WineBottler is an App to manage and wrap your Windows apps into convenient OS X apps. WineBottler helps you with running Windows programs on OS X.
Discontinued
The application has not been updated for almost three years: https://bitbucket.org/winebottler/winebottler/src/master/, https://bitbucket.org/winebottler/winebottler/src/master/It also does not support the latest versions of macOS: https://www.reddit.com/r/winehq/comments/j43ziq/comment/g7gqpk5/
WineBottler vs CrossOver opinions
It's much more complicated than Crossover. CrossOver is simple to use and WineBottler is much more complicated
Q4Wine is a qt4 GUI for wine that will help you manage wine prefixes and installed applications
A front-end or user interface (UI) is the presentation and interaction layer of an app or website. Most modern emulator apps have basic game list UIs that you can interact with using a mouse/keyboard but not a game controller.
![Dolphin (Wii, Gamecube, Virtual Console) [Linux, macOS, & Windows]](https://d4.alternativeto.net/_QJhCQar_rHZe2YTeX8tgfgkp487bVNKb20XPmyENZE/rs:fill:400:225:0/g:ce:0:0/YWJzOi8vZGlzdC9zL2JvdHRsZW5vc2VfOTgwMzk4X2Z1bGwucG5n.jpg)
Wineskin is a tool used to make ports of Windows software to Mac OS X. The ports are in the form of normal Mac application bundle wrappers. It works like a wrapper around the Windows software, and you can share just the wrappers if you choose.
Discontinued
Hasn't been updated in over 6 years and doesn't work on most modern versions of macOS: https://sourceforge.net/projects/wineskin/, https://github.com/Gcenx/WineskinServer#wineskin
Run Linux programs on macOS, a different Linux distro, or a different architecture.
No screenshots yet
PyWinery is a graphical, easy and simple wine-prefix manager which allows you to launch apps, explore and manage configuration of separate prefixes, graphically and faster than setting variables on linux shell.
Discontinued
Not updated for over five years: https://github.com/ergoithz/pywinery/commits/master
